“… use the promotional code AllieLopez for five dollars off any order over forty bucks. All right. Time for our next caller.” Text reading Vincente Espina, ghost problem sits at the top of the inbound call queue showing on my third monitor. I poke the button to put him live. No, the computers aren’t psychic. We have call screeners. “Hi, Vincente! You’re on the air with Allie. How can I help you?”
While waiting for his response, I open myself to his presence for a psychic connection. It sounds weird to think about psychic stuff and modern technology working together, but having an active telephone connection makes it easier to ‘find’ someone.
“Hi, yes. I don’t usually believe in this sort of thing,” says Vincente, with no trace of an accent. “But I’ve experienced some things no one can explain.”
A murky, indistinct image of a fortyish man in a blue button-down shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots appears in my mind. He’s thick, but not overweight… someone who clearly works a physical job. For no particular reason, it feels wrong to see him not wearing a cowboy hat. Pretty sure he wears one most of the time when not at home.
“What sort of things?” I ask, still focusing on my connection to him. “Are you having a ghost problem?”
Vincente fidgets. More of the scene around him fills in via distant seeing. A kitchen. Lots of medium browns. Steel sink. He’s holding a cordless phone but hovering next to the base unit on the wall as if it had a wire tethering it. “Aye. It’s not easy for me to say this, but I have no choice. Something is here, and I think it wants to kill me.”
Curtis gives me the double thumbs up. Callers like this are great for ratings.
A sense of distress comes over me… suffocating. “You’re having trouble breathing?”
“Yes!” Vincente rubs the front of his neck. “It happened about two hours ago, real bad. I saw an ad for your show on a bus, so I figured what the hey, right? The spirit attacked me again just a few minutes ago when I waited on hold.”
I swing my distant seeing around to get a look at his face. Square jaw, thin mustache… and a line of red marks across the front of his throat. “Did you feel anything happen, like a tightness around your neck?”
“Exactly. Like something squeezed me so hard I couldn’t breathe. Stopped when I went outside.” He glances fearfully at his kitchen, the way someone might do if they suspected a home invader stalked them.
The motion of his head gives me a better look at the line of red marks on his throat… and I gasp. Yeah, sure, I may not be any sort of forensics expert, but there’s no mistaking the pattern as anything other than a thick rope.
In an instant, I’m certain Vincente suffered a paranormal attack, and the spirit responsible most likely died from a noose… or is a serial killer who strangled their victims. His base aura appears at last—pale blue. He’s a peaceful sort of person. Purple-pink in the nimbus around him reveals he’s frightened. I get the notion most of his fear comes from the crack in his skepticism. People don’t usually take ghosts and such in stride. Heck, I didn’t. The first time I saw Millicent, I nearly fainted.
“I think there might be a hostile spirit in your home, Vincente.” I zoom out my view to scope the property. “The feeling I’m getting is a male. Lots of anger.”
“Maybe he doesn’t want me in the house? The choking stopped when I walked outside.”
I nod, even though he can’t see me. “It’s fairly common for physically aggressive spirits to be territorial and defend their homes.”
“How can I protect myself?”
“A few things. Give me a moment to have a look around, okay? You know, psychically.”
“All right.”
Curtis inserts an obligatory ‘spooky sound’ over the airwaves to fill the momentary silence. Funny, some people actually use my show’s ‘doing psychic stuff’ sound effect as a ringtone. Anyway, a talk show host not talking is usually a big no-no on radio, but the premise of my show is psychic stuff, so they let me get away with not talking continuously, but I can’t stay silent for too long.
My vision glides past the door to the front yard. It’s a one-story ranch house, mostly surrounded by open space except for a cluster of abandoned buildings a couple hundred feet away inside a chain link fence at the base of a hilly ridge. Looks like an old mining operation. He’s out there a few miles east of Edwards Air Force Base in the Kramer Hills. Middle of freakin’ nowhere. Barring some long-forgotten battle on the land, the most likely source of an angry spirit in the vicinity is the mining operation. If there’s a mine tunnel there, good chance the spirit died.
No sooner do I think it, than my head fills with the notion someone killed him for gold. Also, the urgency clinging to me intensifies. Something about this situation demands more involvement from me than a simple few minutes of radio airtime. I’m not, however, getting any specific source of anger or connection between the spirit and Vincente.
“The spirit’s anger feels undirected. It may be he used to live in the house or on your land. Try gently reminding him he’s dead and the two of you can share the house. Also, ask what’s making him angry. If you don’t have any electronic recorders, suggest he knock or make noise as a ‘yes’ response.”
“Umm. All right. I suppose I can try that.”
A soft beep in my ear tells me I’m almost out of time. “I’m so sorry, Vincente. There’s more I feel we need to do here, but we’re getting close to the end of the show for tonight.”
“I understand. Thank you for at least helping me know I’m not crazy.” He chuckles.
Seeing his property—and mailbox out front at the end of a long dirt driveway—gives me an address to work with. I also get his phone number from the call queue display.
Yeah… my urge to help him makes sense now. Vincent isn’t dealing with an ordinary bad-attitude spirit.
This one’s dangerous.
And I really ought to do something about it.
Chapter Two
Out of the Graveyard
One nice thing about working later in the day: no need to set my alarm.
My first time slot at K-RAP sucked in terms of scheduling. I’d been grateful to have a job after Donna fired me from the psychic hotline, but getting home from work after the sun came up would have driven me crazy sooner or later.
Anyway, I’m assigned to Stormy’s hours now. My new show is Tuesday through Saturday from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Basically, I have the ‘evening commute’ shift. I show up at the station usually around noon as I’ve still gotta do the eight-hour day thing. Radio is awesome, but it’s not fantasy land. When I’m not on the air, I’m running around performing various other functions, mostly production assistant or sitting in the electronics room learning how to run stuff. Sometimes, I end up staffing a table at promotional events. Figure it’s job security. If, for whatever reason, the big bosses fall out of love with my show, I have a chance to keep working at the station as a tech. Or finding another radio gig elsewhere.
But yeah... so happy not to be on graveyard shift anymore. Since changing my work hours, I usually go to sleep around one or two in the morning, because I don’t need to wake up early. The other cool thing about my hours is the traffic’s all going the other direction (away from downtown LA) when I’m heading into work. By the time I leave the studio, traffic’s pretty much nil.